As I half-assed watched the CBS evening news last night, I saw a small soundbite piece on all the contracts for rebuilding Mississippi..they are going to big corporations outside the affected states including one that I believe they said was a subsidiary of Halliburton.
I dug around on the internet shortly after the show ended looking for a written piece on this news. I found nothing including the CBS Evening News site..the assholes had nothing on it.
I looked again tonight and found a couple articles regarding the situation. Yes, the Army Corp of Engineers and those lovely folks over at FEMA control over 60 BILLION of the Federal money earmarked for rebuilding Mississippi and Louisiana.YES, those assclowns are awarding all if not most of the contracts to big companies outside both states. The corps has been criticized for allowing out-of-state companies to do debris removal that business and political leaders say Mississippi firms should be doing. Its largest contract has gone to Pompano Beach, Fla.-based AshBritt Inc. This creates a wonderful situation that trickles down to the the local contractors in small teensy subcontracts. An excerpt from a Times-Picayune article:
"The blue-tarp roof, a symbol of hurricane damage in south Louisiana and Mississippi as recognizable as curbside debris, may wind up as a post-Katrina emblem of government waste reminiscent of the Pentagon's fabled $435 hammers and $640 toilet seats.
Depending on the extent of damage and the size of the roof, the federal government is paying anywhere from a few hundred dollars to $5,000 to install a typical tarp. The cost to taxpayers to tack up a covering of blue vinyl is roughly the same, on a per-square-foot basis, as what a homeowner would pay to install a basic asphalt-shingle roof.
Yet the laborer putting nail to tarp typically earns only a fraction of that. The cost is driven up by layers of subcontractors, an expensive flowchart that sometimes produces the sub-sub-sub-sub-subcontractor, known in post-Katrina parlance as a "fifth-tier sub."
The arrangement isn't unique to roofing. On almost any contract let by either the Federal Emergency Management Agency or the Army Corps of Engineers, who together control most of the more than $60 billion earmarked by Congress for hurricane aid, a similar system of tiering exists. Nor are such contractual layers indigenous to a universe shattered by Katrina and Rita. Those involved in the work say similar arrangements are commonplace after natural disasters throughout the United States.
In other words, the guy spinning a Bobcat choked with tree limbs on a residential street may be earning as little as $1 per cubic yard of debris, although the prime contractor may be billing 20 times that amount for the service. "
Sorry but I find this to be total bullshit spending in an area that already is getting hosed. Its as the article states..another "emblem of government waste reminiscent of the Pentagon's fabled $435 hammers and $640 toilet seats. "
Bush and his cronies..they are still fucking the victims of hurricane Katrina...and the taxpayers, whilst the rich get richer.
